Reclaiming national identity in Kurdish school textbooks

This article is a qualitative and comparative study of elementary school textbooks in the Kurdish autonomous enclave of Rojava in Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Historical circumstances and political forces account for both superficial and ideological differences between the two sets of textbooks. Nonethless, despite the Rojava leadership’s ostensible opposition to nationalism and the KRI’s com-mitments to respect the states of the region, both illustrate attempts by the ruling party in each region to promote a distinct Kurdish nationalism with a view toward nurturing pan-Kurdish identity.